99% Invisible - 83- Heyoon

Episode Date: July 3, 2013

Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alex Goldman was a misfit. Bored and disaffected and angry, he longed for a place to escape to. And then he found Heyoon. The only way to find out about Heyoon for someone to … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Maybe the last time I went out there was 2005 as early stages dating this lady. I went over to her house. She was like, I just had this crazy dream where you and I were like walking through a field and and came on a spaceship And I was like, oh yeah, you want to go there? And she's like, what are you talking about? It's like, no, that's a place. We can we can go. It's not far And we finally saw this place. She was just like overtaken with how magical it was to see this thing that just doesn't seem real

with how magical it was to see this thing that just doesn't seem real. Why are you guys taking us out to the middle of nowhere? Hey, hey, hey, you don't know where we're gonna go. It's a secret. I was really lucky to grow up in Ann Arbor. We had great record stores and an art house movie theater, and of course Ann Arbor is the home of the University of Michigan, so there was a lot going on for Small Town. But it was a small town, and I was a misfit. And like a lot of young misfits and small towns, I was bored and disaffected and angry a lot. That misfit is Alex Goldman.

He's a producer at the radio show on the media and he now lives in New York City. I hated high school, I was a bad student, and most of my friends went to different schools. In fact, although I've gone by Alex my entire life, that's actually my middle name. My first name's Michael, and for at least half of my high school career, my teachers and peers all called me Michael. It was like I walked around pretending to be a completely different person for most of my waking life. I felt like I didn't belong anywhere, and I desperately wanted to escape this oppressively

small town that felt completely devoid of wonder. And then I found Hey Yoon. Alright. Okay, where are we? I hope someone brought a flashlight. No, no, no, we can't be using flashlights. See us. Oh, just the fluggy man.

Take my lighter. The only way you found out about Hey Yoon was if someone took you there. It was like there was the secret club of kids who knew about it. I got initiated when I was 15. You drive out into the middle of nowhere, deep in the country, and park alongside this dirt road. All right, so step one, we've gotta get over that fence. There was this fence that you had to climb over. It had the sign on it.

Guys, I don't know about this. Come on, man. The sign read, turn back. Turn back. This is private property. You're not welcome here for any reason. Please, now. Turn back and leave in peace.

Turn back and leave in peace. It almost felt like a dare. Trust me, this is going to change your life! Once you were over the fence, you passed alongside a white farmhouse. The guy that owns that house is crazy. I heard a rumor that he shot a kid full of rocks off of getting near his house. I heard he's got a pack of attack dogs.

I heard he's skinned pack of attack dogs. I heard he's skin to kid alive. A path behind the house led to this thin line of trees but once you made it through the trees you're in this huge field and there was something else there in the field. Something man-made. Something really big. right up here right up here okay here's what we got to do when we get up to that clearing everybody run as fast as you can how far until you see it okay ready three two one go Three, two, one. Go! There it is.

Whoa. Welcome to Hey-Hoon. Oh, it's beautiful. The structure was made mostly of wood, with a canopy of teflon and nylon stretched over a metal frame. From the base, there were stairs leading up to a platform about 10 feet off the ground, suspended over a boulder about the size of a Volkswagen bug.

At the top of the stairs, there were these two pieces of glass in the floor, and one night a friend stood underneath with a lighter while I looked down from on top. There was an etching on one of those pieces of glass. It said, the Hayun Pavilion. H-E-Y-O-O-N Hayun, the Hayun Pavilion. There was other signage too. One sign that sort of welcomes you there.

This pavilion is a work of art. Designed and carefully put together for more than two years by many workmen and artisans. If you by some happenstance are now here in this place, please take pleasure in its serenity. But please do not disturb it nor to face its beauty in any way. Its beauty alone is your reward for meandering here. For your respect, the spirit of the designer artist will leave you in peace. But then right next to that, there is this other sign. It said, and I'm quoting, if you are here, you shouldn't be.

This is a privately owned farm off limits to outsiders. You have crossed clearly marked keep out and no trespassing signs on fence lines and gates. Please, now, respect the owner's privacy by leaving this place in peace. Thank you. Some of the no trespassing signs may have backfired a little bit, because there was this, I feel like there's this sort of contrariness to teenagers where it's like, well, if there's that many no trespassing signs, then it must be awesome.

I rounded up a few of my high school friends and talked to them about, hey, you. It seems like it still isn't drenched in their minds as it has been in mine. It was, I mean, it blew my mind the first time I saw it. I'd best describe, hey, you to someone who's never seen it. They describe it. Big. It's maybe the size of a small house or a hut.

And it looked like a high-air balloon. Like a jellyfish. A mushroom? A mushroomy sort of. A flowblig. Like a telescope observatory. Like a spaceship. A rocket ship. I mean, when you first look at it, you kind of think it's going to take off

or something. It looks very alien and foreign, sitting in the middle of that big field. The place definitely has a stone-hedge feel to it. There were a number of myths about why he even was there, that it was built to commemorate the owner's dead daughter, that it was built along ley lines, that it was created for a wedding ceremony, that it was created for a wedding ceremony. That it was designed for paganistic rituals or for stargazing.

The place was such an enigma. There's no way you could have known it was out there if someone didn't take you to it. The first person who founded has been lost to history, but by the time I was taken there, it was an oral tradition handed down from one group of teens to the next. Part of its power was that in being secret,

it created a community. It bound people together, appealing for an angry 15-year-old. It was a secret, sneaky, teenagers only, like, kids versus adults, secret time. Hey, you was mysterious, beautiful, and peaceful, and it just kind of reassured you about all of your inner turmoil, your deeper questions, I guess.

It's almost like it was designed to inspire teenagers in the local area to come out there and hang out and drink beer and smoke pot and, you know, kind of capture their imagination. I probably went out there once every couple of months for the next four or five years. We'd go out there and drink, do drugs, sometimes just talk. And of course, it was always thrilling to bring new people out there, to indoctrinate them into our secret club.

Plenty of romantic relationships started out there. The first time I made out was someone who would become my girlfriend, happened while we were sitting on Hayun during a rain storm. It was otherworldly and magical. It felt out of time, and it felt like it was hours. Going to visit Hayune was the perfect mixture of danger and secrecy and awe to capture 15-year-old Alex's imagination for the next decade and a half. Even after I moved away in 2001, I was fixated on trying to find out why it was there. So in 2009, I wrote a letter to the White Farmhouse we always snuck past on our way to Hey-Yoon, asking them if they were the owners.

Alex got a letter back. They didn't own Hey-Yoon. Their neighbors did. Rita and Peter Hayden. That's when I realized that what we'd been calling the Hay-Yoon pavilion for years was actually the Hayden pavilion. That Gaelic font made the D look kind of like a second O. And we'd only ever seen it in the middle of the night. If the names Rita and Peter Hayden sound familiar, it's probably because they're non-profit. The Mosaic Foundation has been underwriting public radio for decades. And by the Mosaic Foundation of Rita and Peter Hayden, based in an armor, honoring the

literary arts and the universe of great ideas, be well, do good work, and keep in touch. I sent the Hayden's a letter, apologizing for my youthful indiscretions and asking them if I could interview them about Hayun. Peter Hayden wrote back, quote, so you're one of the little s**t to invade our privacy by visiting our pavilion when you were told at many places along the way not to be there. End quote. This was in 2009 before I was a public radio producer. I was just a guy in New York who fixed computers, and a guy who used to trespass on the Hayden's property.

The rest of his letter was friendly, but he wasn't too keen on talking to me. But I couldn't let it go that I communicated with the creator of Hey Yoon, and that the mystery could be solved. It drove me bonkers. So in 2012, after working in public radio for a couple of years, now I had a better excuse to try to talk to Hayden. And I decided to try again.

Peter Hayden can be a hard man to reach. He doesn't use email. He doesn't always answer the phone. And he was reluctant to give an interview for fear of attracting even more people to Hayoon. But after a couple phone calls and a few facts messages, he agreed to meet me for an interview about Heyun at Heyun. It was like meeting the wizard of Oz.

What are you Alex? Yes I am. How do you do? Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Let's go back up there. OK, which fence do you want to go to? We're going to the first gate just south of that white residence. All right

This will be something new for you coming in legally. Yeah, and during the day The journey hasn't yeah, certainly has Alex nice to meet you nice to meet you Alex What a journey hasn't it? Yeah, certainly has. How you doing? I'm Peter. Alex, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Alex. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. Yeah, I'm a mixed feelings of energy to imagine. Yeah, I bet.

In my effort to try and respect the Hayden's privacy, I offered to refer to the pavilion only as Hayun and not use his name. But he told me from the beginning that he wasn't interested in anonymity. He was interested in privacy. I don't think that I want this to be anonymous. I want it to be with my name attached to it. But that doesn't mean to say that we have to violate our privacy. We don't have to tell where it is. We don't have to say whatever. I mean, if you said

Ann Arbor, that's good enough. Most people would not know. I was actually going to be even less specific. I was going to say southeastern Michigan to give people less of a So I know my name from our credit in PR in the mosaic foundation of Rita and Peter Hayden based in an arbor honoring the passion of NPR journalist all around the world whose stories take us there every day Because we always say based in an arbor. That's what it says. Right always Peter Hayden told me that Hayun was designed by a friend of his, an artist and designer named Joseph Kinnebroon. Kinnebroon is wife for visiting the Hayden's one night in 1978 when a massive blizzard came through and snowed the men. We were trapped in our house down at the bottom of the hill

for five days, just the four of us. But we got to know each other quite well during that period. I think Joe is nuts and I like being around him. I find him, you know, a couple of them, the kind of person I'm not. The Haydons and the Kinebres got to be close. That spring, the Kinebres came back for a visit. And we went to a downtown restaurant. We got absolutely, it's sottingly drunk.

We had planned, he'd said, I'm gonna build you up with me and I said, okay, we'll do this. And by dusk, we decided we'd come out here and look at this field and the position where the pavilion was going to be. I had nothing, I didn't have a flashlight, I didn't have anything. Our wives are parked right here, we were parked and they watched these two stumbling drunks walking across the field and Joe said, I can't see you. And I said, well, what are we going to do? And he said, well, he said in order for me to see you, I've got to have a light. And I

said, what's that going to be? And he be he said well here's a piece of the New York Times let's you do a flare so we'd let this stand and we could have set the whole field of light we didn't and so that was exactly the spot where I was standing with this burning newspaper it was funny stuff to watch us working that night. And that's how Peter Hayden and Joe Kinnebrook drunk and running around with a burning newspaper decided to build Hayun. Joe said that if Peter paid for the parts in labor, he'd do the design for free.

I found it kind of oddly reassuring that the creation of Hayun came out of the same sort of drunk and antics my friends and I would get into almost two decades later at the same spot, that you could trace its origin story back to a sleepover party. But on the other hand, Peter couldn't give me any particular reason for its existence. It's just there because it is, because it's beautiful, because it's art. No, it was a professive English at the University of Michigan for 24 or 5 years, I was a professor of English at the University of Michigan for 24 or 5 years starting in the 1960s. I have a kind of an aesthetic view of what art is. It teaches you steps by which wisdom is gained. In that sense, art is useless.

It doesn't have any practical impact. And so for me, this pavilion was always sort of that. It was something that was a place for contemplation, a place for pleasure, for enjoyment, for communityality with people that I chose to be here. Peter's relationship with Hayun feels like an echo of the possessiveness, the secretiveness, the ownership that me and my friends all feel for it. The only difference is that Peter actually owns it. Like us, he feels protective of it. Unlike us, he's actually responsible for it.

Over the years, he's had to clean up the messes left by drunk teens and even some damage left by vandals. Unlike you, Alex, you were some s**t heads that came out here and actually did some damage left by vandals. Unlike you, Alex, there were some sh** heads that came out here and actually did some damage. And we had to repair that. They actually cut the covering. We know that there were parties out here. We had candles and things like that. Sometimes it looked like there maybe had been sort of religious things going on here.

There may have been poetry readings. And it was, you know, I think a hefty amount of sex. I don't think there were orgies out here, but I think that couples would come out here and find it very compelling to be part of nature out here and be one with the nature, especially on full moons and stuff, that was always a very seem to be an attractive time for people to be out here. I'm curious, you know, while I was talking to my friends about the signage that's out

front and the first sign, the sign that says, you know, sort of respect this and leave this in peace. Congratulations. This is your reward for finding this. And you said quite that out. It's taking, congratulations. I didn't say that. It didn't work in me that much.

I don't think. But anyway, please continue. Well, the reason I say that is because one of my friends said to me, I kind of believe that they wanted us to go out there. They wanted us to find it and that's why there are so many signs daring us to visit it. No, that's absolutely fabricated. That's wishful thinking on your part. Nothing like that of the sort we wanted. If I choose to utilize it, that's my business.

That's my religious experience. It's not a common temple for everyone to utilize. It's funny you should temple for everyone to utilize. It's funny you should put it that way because that's exactly how my friends and I all felt about it then. And still do now, even though we ourselves were trespassers. One of my friends who I talked to for this story, Jason van Maider, put it this way. There were like certain kids who would, I would talk to when they'd say like, oh yeah, that pavilion out there, like I took a six pack out there, we got wasted out there the other night or whatever.

And I'd feel a little bit hurt by that. Like, why are you just going out there to drink? You know, you're just talking to me about your 30 pack of people are out at the pavilion, like, sacrilegious, you know? That's like my church. It's like you're sacrilegging my church. When we found trash at Hayoon, leftover from other people, my friends and I would clean it up,

or at least try to minimize our impact on the place. But for Peter, that doesn't matter. We were all just a bunch of interlopers. Did you go to Pioneer High School? I actually went to all three. I went to Pioneer Community and here on in the course of my troubled high school career. Okay, what do you say? Presumably along the way there, at least you learned the English language. You were able to read things, especially something that's subtle like that, like that. But I would challenge you to say that was an invitation. It was not an invitation.

It was really meant to say, look, here's the fact, you're here. You've come to this place. I don't want you to do any damage and I don't want to piss you off. So here's what I'm telling you. You know, leave. Admire its beauty, but leave. Don't stay here, leave.

And I think that was the message that I wanted to be. I didn't want them to, I didn't, because it's like, you know, spending 20 minutes in your sock drawer as opposed to five minutes for two minutes in your sock drawer. It's just, in some way it became kind of polluted to me in some ways when people, people that I didn't know didn't invite, had nothing to, had no knowledge of, and whose values and whose sense of aesthetics were not the same as mine, I felt that, you know, it's a personal violation.

Talking with Peter, I can see how much he values privacy and having control over the stuff he owns. He hired a former cop to drive a decommissioned police car around his property. It's got lights and sirens and a logo that says RPH security as in Rita and Peter Hayden. He says it's mostly to keep out hunters. What I say is we don't allow hunters, we allow a hunter who wants this property. And he's entitled to take one buck a year as many doses he wants. And when he did catch kids that were out there to sneak into Hey-Yoon,

he'd make them give their names and addresses and make them write letters of apology. He still has a lot of those letters. Yet for all of Peter's possessiveness of Hey-Yoon, he doesn't actually do a lot with it. You know, the place itself is not meant to be used for me anyway. In other words, it's perfectly good being by itself, not having any occupants. Peter hosts private wine tastings once or twice a year in Hey-Eun, and maybe Hollander

over to it from his house from time to time, but that's pretty much it. And it doesn't really matter. Peter's the actual owner of Hey-Eun, and he can but that's pretty much it. And it doesn't really matter. Peter's the actual owner of Heyun, and he can do anything he wants with it. He can use it, he can not use it. He even talked to me about how he's thought of tearing it down. And he can, it's his progative.

The way Heyun gets used, or doesn't get used, is under total control of the Haytons. But when you think about design intent, what Heyun was actually designed to do, there's one other person for whom it might be fair game to weigh in. This guy. I'm so happy, in spite of Peter's unhappiness about interlovers, that young people came in to sneak a peek. This of course is Joseph Kinabru, the designer of Hey Yoon.

The guy who got drunk and set newspapers on fire with Peter Hayden back in the day. He left Michigan decades ago and never had any idea that Hey Yoon had become such an underground attraction. His take is somewhat different than Peter Hayden's. I'm delighted, I'm absolutely delighted. How could I not feel something really good about what you did even though you weren't supposed to? You were all quite naughty, but that's quite alright. It's one of those things that life should include.

Granted, Joseph Kinnebrew, unlike Peter Hayden, doesn't have to deal with interlopers, coming onto his property doing God knows what under the cloak of darkness. But Kinnebrew says that it's bigger than a question of property. It's the impact that the pavilion has on the landscape, on the psyche of the people who come into contact with it, through means legitimate or not. For Kenobru, Hayun is out in the world. Contidine tomato paste, you have this wonderful thing that you used to say, you know, once they're peeled or packed, of course, to the tomatoes.

And I feel to a certain degree, the same thing about artwork. You know, once it's done, it's done. I'm gone, I'm out of the picture. It doesn't even belong to me anymore. I'm not even sure that thing belongs to the head. You see, possessing it has nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing.

I remember as a youngster sneaking off to look at something called Peabody's tomb, which is the Somazaliam and a forbidden monastery that we all visited on occasion about the same age you were. She was west of Chicago where I grew up. And allegedly Peabody was in this glass coffin where these candles were lit every night. We were to sneak out there as soon. Here you are, you're 33 years old, forgot sick.

You're still holding on to it. What a wonderful thing. Even though I'm sure it pisses Peter Hayden off to say this, I can't help but feel like a part of Hayoon belongs to me. I think that other people I know have a similar feeling. There were a couple of people who refused to talk to me for this story, because to them, to share Hayoon with the world is to ruin Hayoon.

We found a photographer who had taken some pictures of Hayoon, but when we asked him if we could post them to our website, he replied with an enthatic, no, he did not want the secret getting out on his watch. And I have to admit, I understand where they're coming from. But on the other side of the coin, when I put out a call to friends on Facebook to see who would talk to me about Hey-Un, some wrote, what's Hey-Un? And that gave me the same sense of exclusivity, of belonging that I had when I was a teenager. And now, over the course of producing this story, I've actually gained a kind of buy-in from the grand arbiter of Hey-Yoon himself.

I'm no longer just a little s**t to Peter Hayden. Alex, look, you're a different person than you were then. Secondly, as you know, I'm a radio guy. I like voices and I like the word pictures that people can weave on the radio. You came credentialed because I hear your voice, I hear your name, Alex, and this morning I heard your name on the media again. I was like, what do you, what's your associate producer? Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm proud of you for doing that. What?

What? What? What? What? What? I'm grateful that I ever got to see Hey-Un. That I live in a world where Hey-Un exists. But I'm also grateful that I live in a world where there are magnificent structures that

are made without me in mind, with nobody in mind. And while I may have gotten a lot out of it and attempted to protect it by only gifting it to certain people, the Haydons are just trying to do the same thing. So even though this feels a little hypocritical, I have to say it. If you ever find yourself out in the middle of nowhere in southeastern Michigan, and you happen to come across some foreboding signs along the side of the road. As a favor to the Haydons, and to me and my friends, please, now, turn back and leave in peace.

Leave. Don't stay here. Leave. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Alex Goldman and Sam Greenspan with me Roman Mars. The people Alex interviewed about breaking to Heyun with him when he was a kid were Rob Logan, Kara Kavarren, Ben Tidswell, Ian Ryan, Fred Thomas, Jason Van Maider, and Alex Bird. Hopefully the statute of limitations on trespassing is up by now.

Special thanks to our cast of radio players, including Cameron Locke, Mujzaity, Ashley and Crit Bomb, and Pat Masidi Miller. They did not break into Hey You and they faked it all in my backyard. So please don't write us and ask us how to find Hey You. We do not know. Alex did not tell us.

I can't want you to say like, I've been about a flashlight. Okay. And then I would say, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, we can't be even flashlight. So let's go. Don't laugh because you're in a mess up the recording. Hey, no flashlights, no flashlights.

No flashlights. As in character, I was acting being an actor. No, nah, nah, no flashlights. Should I start over? I should really have to be. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Radio KALW in San Francisco and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook, I tweet at Roman Mars. But as I said, we couldn't post photos of Hayun, so we had the incredibly talented graphic artist Emil Homewood of the caravan make us some really great illustrations to go with this episode.

So the story continues at 99personinvisible.org.